Episode 213 - China sets up blockchain committee, blockchain university course is launched, and interest rates hit the negatives.

Welcome to this week's Flagship Friday, where we discuss all the happenings in the crypto space of the past week! Tune in to find out what China is up to again, what a political simulation revealed about the crypto-Yuan's flexibility and potential, and much, much more. Also, we've got a couple of announcements... a certain Greek SOMEONE will be joining us for an interview next week, so be sure to stay updated! Also, we're excited to announce that we're nearing this year's broadcast of the Crypties award show! Everything's brewing in the discord, so make sure to join!Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.Rapid FireFidelity gets bitcoin custody and trading license from NY regulatorFidelity obtains a trust license from the New York Department of Financial Services to offer Bitcoin custody service to New York residents. Additionally, Fidelity also received the license to operate a trading platform on which New York’s institutional investors can securely purchase, sell, store or transfer Bitcoin.NEO launched blockchain course in St. Petersburg State UniversityThe course aims to provide insights into distributed ledger in general and Neo technology in particular, and help students building skills in developing with core components of Neo technology.Poloniex closing US accounts December 16thPoloniex is closing US accounts by 12/16/2019 Make sure you have your funds out, this isn't like the Binance closing - they are going to make things harder and charge fees past that date.Coinbase is going to offer insured IRAs - This is pretty sick.comes with $200 million of inusrance by Lloyds which is the most you can getFormer CFO of Facebook has bank account shut down without explanation. (Roelof Botha - though he left the company in 2003. Dude was 31!) A bunch of other crypto-related people also got their account shut down including Justin Sun.Reminder from Reddit - Jed McCaleb can sell 750m XRP this year, and 1B XRP next year. - BHere's a quick recap of the Jed situation with XRP - Basically he was given 9B XRP as the founder of the project. He Left the project and forked to Stellar. When he did, he was planning to sell his XRP. There had been an agreement of some kind in place about how much he could sell, but he incorrectly assumed he could do what he wanted with his assets, they were frozen on an exchange, and he wasn't able to sell them.The lawsuit said that first he had to donate 2B XRP to a charity. However, he'd been TRYING to do this for a long time and the suit stopped him.Then he had limits on what he could sell of his (and his family's) remaining 5.4B XRP.During year 2, 3, and 4 Jed could sell 20k XRP per month.Year 5 and 6 he could sell 750m XRP for the year. (where we are now)Year 7 he could sell 1B XRPYear 8 he can sell 2BObviously this can have lasting implications on the price.Trump summons Powell to discuss rates amid WH attacks on Fed (and a discussion on interest rates) - KPresident Donald Trump summoned Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to the White House on MondayFed official statement is that Powell told Trump same thing he said to congressThe economy is in good shape,Fed will likely suspend rate cuts for now (3 cuts this year)Speculation is Trump is putting pressure to cut rates more aggressivelyTrump has openly criticized Powell for keeping interests too high, says economy would be even better if they were negative like Japan and EuropeThe Fed’s benchmark rate is in a range of 1.5% to 1.75%, an extremely low level by historic standardsTrump has complained that negative rates in Japan and EU put us at competitive disadvantage.maybe keeps dollar relatively stronger which hurts exports a bit, but only part of the storyNEW GAME - What am I thinking about now?In a speech last week, Trump said, referring to negative interest, “Give me some of that.... I want some of that money. Our Federal Reserve doesn’t let us do it.”More importantly, what is the purpose of controlling interest rates? When should they be loweredOriginally thought to be short term solution, but has spread and cemented. (EU-2014, Japan in 2016)Currently $16T in negative-yielding debt worldwideThis is a sign of risk aversion and fear from investors, willing to lose money to lower riskFive central banks have interest rates set below zero:Japan: -0.10%Sweden: -0.30%European Central Bank: -0.40%Denmark: -0.70%Switzerland: -0.80%Germany recently issued world's first 30yr zero-coupon bond, flopped and sold less than half issuedTheres also the fear that near zero or negative rates limit ability to respond to recessionTop 10 coins now vs The day we started the podcast - BWhen we started - BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, ADA, NEM, LTC, TRON, XLM, IOTANow - BTC, ETH, XRP, TETHER, BCH, LTC, EOS, BNB, BSV, XLM.Notes - ETH passed XRP by a pretty substantial margin.Tether was 37th Overall market Cap back then with 1.4B, and is now 4B strong. Jesus.Cardano :(Tron Sorry AdamBNB was barely even around, and was down all the way at 31.NEM has fallen substantially, but I didn't keep up as to why.China sets up national committee for blockchain standards AChina has launched a national standards committee for blockchain technology in a bid to drive “high-tech innovation” in the area. The committee has been set up and will be run by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), which coordinates standardization work across the country.“help high-tech innovation”, “promote high-levels of openness” and “lead high-quality development.”“establish and improve the standards system of relevant fields, and formulate forward-looking, high-quality standards that are leading, systematic and rigorous.”The news comes as cryptocurrencies were recently branded “illegal Ponzi schemes” and “financial fraud” by a television program on Chinese state-run channel CCTV-1. As Decrypt reported, Chinese current affairs show Focus Report said 102 cryptocurrencies were scam “pyramid schemes” while calling over 755 tokens “air coins” and “money-grabbing schemes.”Crypto Around the WorldIn Wargames run by Harvard, North Korea was able to use the digital Yuan to circumvent US Sanctions. BThis was essentially a high level roleplay from a group of former high ranking US officials and takes place in 2021.In the game North Korea had just completed a missile test, and they got all their materials with the Yuan.They talk about the need to weaponize the US dollar, and the digital Yuan hurting that ability.The overarching theme was that the digital currency landscape will probably have a weakening affect on the US enforcing their sanctions.All of this centers around SWIFT, and in order to push the adoption of another option North Korean hackers in the example were able to steal $3b from the SWIFT messaging system to promote it instability.was a cool exercise, and we've linked to the 1.5 hour video.German Bank Goes Negative - KAccording to multiple local press outlets including the Süddeutsche ZeitungVRF Bank in Northern Bavaria now charging 0.5% negative interest rates on small depositsThis is because of the cost for the bank to park money at European Central BankBefore only deposits above 100,000Just take a time out to think about this, inflation aside we are losing right away by saving